Women in Math and Science: It’s Not about Daring to Discuss, It’s About Discussing What is Important

Last week, John Tierney of the New York Times wrote a column, "Daring to Discuss Women in Science, " in which he questioned a proposed law designed to enhance gender equality in science and engineering. Tierney brought up new research pointing to sex differences in aptitude for math and science and, in a nut shell, suggested that if existing inequalities reflect naturally occurring sex differences, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to cry bias.

Usually, I read columns like Tierney's, shake my head, and move on. But, this time, I feel compelled to comment. Maybe it's because I am on vacation and have a minute to think about something other than getting grants, publishing papers, and finding jobs for my postdocs and graduate students. But, really, I think I am just over what seems like the perpetual presentation of "new data" that "finally" explains gender inequality in terms of inherent sex differences in math and science aptitude.

Tierney brings up a number of points in his column, but I am going to focus on just one that I think is particularly important to address: the idea that there is strong evidence for innate sex differences at the highest end of the ability continuum. Tierney begins with the 1980 Benbow and Stanley data, in which the researchers found that, by age 13, boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1 in terms of top scores on the SAT-M. To be fair, Tierney also points out that, by 1991, this 13 to 1 imbalance had dropped to 4 boys for every 1 girl, and suggests that increased math opportunities for girls might explain the drop. But this is where Tierney thinking goes awry. He goes on to suggest that since the gender gap still exists today - in a climate where encouragement and support for girls in math is strong - then maybe socialization cannot account for the sex differences that remain.

First, according to my research, as of 2005, there were 2.8 (not 4) boys to every 1 girl scoring at the top on the SAT-M.1 But, whether the gap is 4 or 2.8 to 1, the issue is still the same. If girls and boys are being given the same opportunities, why is there still a gap at all?

To be frank, this question doesn't deserve an answer because, at least in terms of socialization and support for math achievement in the U.S., girls and boys are not yet on equal footing. This is true even at the high-end of math abilities where it has been suggested that boys are more likely to reside than girls because boys are more variable in their math-related aptitudes (by the way, this variability view means that there will be more boys at the bottom too).

Take data provided from the American Mathematics Competitions or AMC.2 The AMC are a series of contests sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America, held annually at more than 3,000 high schools across the U.S. Students who perform well on an initial AMC test are invited to participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination. Students who perform well on this exam are invited to the highly prestigious U.S. Mathematical Olympiad.

As an initial part of the AMC, students are asked to complete 25 problems in 75 minutes. Here is an example from one of the 2007 tests, the AMC 12 (for twelfth grade or below):

How many three-digit numbers are composed of three distinct digits such that one digit is the average of the other two?(A) 96 (B) 104 (C) 112 (D) 120 (E) 256

Don't feel bad if you have difficulty solving this problem because the AMC test is designed to be hard so as to distinguish between students performing at the highest levels in math. To give you some idea of how performance on the AMC 12 tests translates to other tests you may be familiar with, only 44% of students who score in the 99th percentile on the SAT-M (between 780-800 points) get the above question right. These tests are specifically designed to capture high-level math ability.

Most interesting is where top-scoring boys and girls come from. Whereas the boys who score at the top are from a variety of backgrounds, the top-scoring girls are all clustered in a small set of elite schools. Indeed, if one looks specifically at the data from the International Mathematics Olympiads and the China Girls Math Olympiad (which U.S. students qualify for after high level performance on the initial AMC test, stellar performance on the subsequent American Invitational Mathematics Examination, and after doing well at the U.S. Mathematics Olympiads), as many girls come from the top 20 scoring AMC schools as from all other high schools in the U.S. combined. Unless you believe that girls with the highest level of math ability choose to attend only a handful of schools, these data suggest that most girls aren't being given the chance to reach their full mathematics potential. In other words, only a handful of schools are giving girls the support they need to succeed.

So, what does one make of these data? Socialization differences are alive and well - even at the high end of the ability spectrum. Let's stop trying to nail the sexes to a bell curve and instead, like the House of Representatives, concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in math and science. After all, it was less than two decades ago that Mattel stopped producing the Teen Talk Barbie that said things like, "Will we ever have enough clothes?" and "Math class is tough!" We still have some work to do.

1Brody L, Mills C (2005) Talent search research: What have we learned? High Ability Studies, 16, 97-111. See also, Monastersky R (March 4, 2005). Studies show biological differences in how boys and girls learn about math, but social factors play a big role too. Chronicle Higher Education, 51.

2Ellison, G., & Swanson, A. (August, 2009). The Gender Gap in Secondary School Mathematics at High Achievement Levels: Evidence from the American Mathematics Competitions. NBER Working Paper No. 15238.

Thank you for posting this! Your research is incredibly interesting to me. It just so happens that recently I've been reading up on multiple choice test performance as well as overall academic performance and what these factors may be indicative of. I tend to do poorly on mult choice tests, so am curious as to why and how to improve.

It would be interesting to read about how you ruled out the possibility that girls needs to go to elite school to be able to compete evenly with the boys, who apparently often can manage to be top performers without those schools.

it's been shown that a large percentage of teachers are unknowingly ( or knowingly ) more encouraging and helpful towards boys in these subjects than they are girls generally. That is why boys so often do good in math regardless of the school they go to. Obviously these elite private schools (which cost an arm and a leg) go out of their way to make sure all sexes at their schools receive equal opportunity and encouragement in all subjects. all this is due to our shitty way of thinking we have relied upon since the beginning of time. (ie. boys can do certain things girls can't and vice versa). sadly, at 26 years old i'm only now learning my interest and abilities lie in science.

Sian,
I read Tierney's post and was going to blog a comment myself (since the "women in math" topic has been one of my pet peeves for a while now). I'm really disappointed with the lack of inquiry that Tierney seems to have made into this topic before deciding to write about it, but am glad that there have been so many critical responses; yours included.
Good work,
Daniel

"Let's stop trying to nail the sexes to a bell curve and instead, like the House of Representatives, concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in math and science."

So, is your entire argument that we should totally abandon a scientific inquiry into this question, attribute all differences to "socialization", and then just listen to the House of Representatives about what to do about it? Moreover, what does "... concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in math and science" specifically mean? Besides, isn't your argument like saying, "Hey, let's forget higher rates of alcoholism for Native Americans, attribute it all to "socialization", stop trying to nail the races to a bell curve and instead, like the House of Representatives, concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in maintaining sobriety?

"Let's stop trying to nail the sexes to a bell curve and instead, like the House of Representatives, concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in math and science."

So, is your entire argument that we should totally abandon a scientific inquiry into this question, attribute all differences to "socialization", and then just listen to the House of Representatives about what to do about it? Moreover, what does "... concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in math and science" specifically mean? Besides, isn't your argument like saying, "Hey, let's forget higher rates of alcoholism for Native Americans, attribute it all to "socialization", stop trying to nail the races to a bell curve and instead, like the House of Representatives, concentrate on what we can do to encourage everyone to reach their full potential in maintaining sobriety?

I'm a psychology student in Europe. I was recently enrolled in a course called "Psycho-educational Intervention", where we had to learn concepts about learning in students and did receive very recent literature about established knowledge etc.

Before I begin, I want to say, that I completely agree with your point of view, that it's rather about possibility than about ability.

So, the thing is: There is indeed evidence, that boys have a biological advantage over girls to understand math and scientific topics. Girls, on the other hand, have an advantage in language and philosophic topics. Bull, Davidson and Nordmann (2009) investigated this and explained that the amount of pre-natal testosterne in children accounts for the development of a certain degree of asymmetrie in the human brain. The more testosterone, the more asymmetric. This asymmetrie favorably effects the area of the brain which is related to perception of forms, structures, numbers etc. Less asymmetrie supposedly leads to less ability to recognize patterns, strucutures etc. but in more ability in language and human related understanding, e.g. empathy, social competence etc. In line with that, studies from Simon Baron-Cohen also show that, for example, autism might follow from very much pre-natal testosterone exposure. Autism is often related to high ability to recognize patterns and systems and a disadvantage in social competence and empathy. So, Baron-Cohen formulated an Empathising-Systemising Theory, which states that high pre-natal testosterone leads to systemising, while low pre-natal testosterone leads to empathising. So, until today, several empirical studies show that pre-natal testosterone leads to more ability to understand patterns and number-related concepts. Therefore, it might be reasonable to state that there are indeed biological predispositions for math and science.

The next thing is about human motivation and performance. My Bachelorthesis embodied a systematic review about motivation. In line with that, I encountered many studies that highly related any kind of performance especially to motivation. It was shown in several studies that high motivation lead to better results in nearly any subject, independent of gender. Also, one of the main factors predicting/influencing motivation is self-efficacy, defined as the "learners’ perceived capabilities for learning or performing actions at designated levels" (Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007). So, self-efficacy is the belief that one can reach a certain goal. This is implicitly logical: when one think that one can reach his goal, action is likely to follow. On the contrary, when one doesn't expect, that one has the capability to reach his goal, it's unlikely that this goal is pursuited at all. Of course, there are other factors that have to be regarded, but I don't want to mention them now. So, one of the most important factors influencing motivation and through this high performance is self-efficacy.

Now, connecting these two strings of evidence, I think that it's the case that, indeed, boys have a genetical -predisposition- to be better in math and science than girls, but that neither means that they are -determined- to be better, nor that girls are -determined- to be worse. It's just a matter how it is handeld. A predisposition to be better means nothing, when it's not used. On the other hand, a predisposition to be worse also means nothing, when it's not provoked. Following from this rationale, I think that what matters is, indeed, the support that children receive.
The prevailing belief that girls are just "determined" to be worse in math might lead many teachers to lose hope in girls more rapidly than in boys, when explaining math and science concepts. This concept also relates stronly to the well known stereotype threat, where it's seen that girls score lower on math, just because they are expected to score lower, causing stress and leading to less performance. This could in turn lead to a decrease in the above stated self-efficacy. The reason for that is goal setting. Research shows that there are 3 types of goals: mastery goals (focus on learning, knowledge aquisition and personal improvement), performance-approach goals (focus on being better than others, getting good grades) and performance-avoidance goals (not looking stupid, avoid getting bad grades). It is seen that these goals moderate the effect of evaluating feedback has on self-efficacy. Girls, that are expected to score worse are pushed into the direction of a performance-avoidance goal. They have the goal to not look stupid, as everyone expects them to. Unfortunately, studies show that these performance-avoidance goals lead to a decrease in self-efficacy, even in the face of success. On the other hand, boys, who are expect to score better, have the possibility to concentrate on improvement and/or good grades, which have improving/neutral effects on self-efficacy, respectively. Taking this perspective, it might be reasonable to state that expectations about a difference in math skill in boys and girls might be one of the causes of the maintenance of this difference.
Broadening the topic, still based on the belief that biologic factors are only a predisposition which can be undermined by the use of self-efficacy, and thus, motivation, I continue citing Weiner's attribution theory (which describes attribution of causation in 3 dimensions: locus, stability and controllability). Following the rationale which I stated above, that girls are expected to score lower and understand less related to math, teachers could loose hope more rapidly in girls. When girls fail, the teacher attributes their failure internal (girl is the cause), stable (biology stays quite the same) and uncontrollable (cognitive ability can't be changed much), which could cause him to say something like "You just don't get it.". This attribution is very disruptive towards self-efficacy, and subsequently, motivation, because it states that there just is no way for her to understand, incrementing learned helplessness, which is priviously shown to also be relatable to math problems. To see a more effective attribution, let's regard a possible teacher attribution towards boy's failure: internal (boy's the cause), instable (it's only this situation where he doesn't understand), controllable (he just didn't excert enough effort to understand), which could cause him to say something like "You're thinking is right, but in the wrong direction.". This attribution improves self-efficacy and subsequently motivation, because it's focus lies on changeable strategy-use or effort instead of inchangeable ability or inheritance.

Concluding all this, my rationale is that biological factors as gender or inheritance are merely predispositions, no determinations. I argue that motivation towards understanding and a belief that one CAN reach the goal of understanding and solving the math problems (self-efficacy) are more utile to think about, than just attribute anything to biology. The reason for that is, that the latter anyhow can't be changed, while the prior can. Also, motivation might decrease the effects of the predisposition. So, I think the topics important to think about are: how can we challenge misattributions and maladapted expectations of teachers, parents and students? How can we apply useful teaching strategies that lead to superior math performance, independent of sex? etc.

So, for research it could be interesting to investigate if the degree of self-efficacy might delimitate or eliminate the explanatory influence of gender in math and science problems. And if so, how we could tackle misbeliefs of an inability to learn math because of inheritance/gender? It might be important, when assessing math performance of boys and girls, to also assess self-efficacy, goal orientations, attributions, availability of efffective feedback (focussing on use of strategies rather than dismissing possibilities to improve because of deficits in ability).

All in all, I really think that there might not be any difference in math performance, if there wasn't the overall belief that boys are better and so, creating a fruitable soil usable only by boys.

Final notes:
I'm sorry, if I wrote a little unstructured, but here it's already quite late and I really wanted to write a reaction to the general topic. I hope I could describe my ideas and thought comprehensively.

I live in Portugal, where this gender issue in math and science does not really exist, at least I have never seen it. Girls are usually better students in every subject, except sports... Everybody thinks math is hard, not just girls... I was top of my school in math and science, and I am getting a Ph.D., because I wanted to become a scientist. Then I realised that there is no place for me in science, because I am not willing to give up the rest of my life and live only to work. I want to have children soon, and I want to be there with them. I see how my Professors struggle to get everything done, and are perpetually tired and overworked. That's not the life I want for myself. So I am willing to let my passion for science go, so I can have the other things in life that I am passionate about. I feel sad that the system is the way it is, and I believe that is the reason there are fewer women in science. I am not willing to travel half the world every few years, just to have a job. I am not willing to work crazy hours just to get the job done. I want more out of life than just a good job. Many men don't...

The kids who go on to do well on the AIME and Math Olympiad are groomed by math coaches, exactly like olympic athletes. This is why the girls are all from the same few schools. The boys and girls spend summers at math camps and class time at school learning strategies for solving these contest problems. Clearly they have natural ability, but the ones who go on to compete internationally have focused on this, mostly to the exclusion of all other extracurriculars. Not every kid with high math ability is willing to spend their time is this way.